


Lentior/Catulus

by KeriArentikai



Category: Spartacus Series (TV), Spartacus: Vengeance
Genre: Agron POV, Angst, Episode Related, M/M, Nasir POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeriArentikai/pseuds/KeriArentikai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agron and Nasir's thoughts during season 2, episodes 2-5.<br/>____<br/>He finds Nasir washing the blood off of himself and hands him a cup of wine.  Nasir’s hands shake but he clutches the cup, refusing to show anything but the fierceness that protects him like a shell. </p><p>“Your first kill?” Agron asks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lentior

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't sure I was going to post this at all, but it seems like a good idea at the moment (alcohol may or may not be involved). Really, these are exercises at understanding the characters. Sorry that Nasir's POV got so maudlin!
> 
> Lentior means 'slower', Catulus means 'puppy', or 'little dog'.

Agron just can’t figure Nasir out. He approaches him like he would a skittish horse, open and friendly, hoping for some kindness in return. But at the beginning, all he gets are stony glares, resentment for his part in the life change Spartacus forced upon him - from being a cared-for house slave to being a fugitive, hunted down by Roman armies.

He appreciates Nasir’s ferocity, his fearlessness. Sure, he wasn’t thrilled that he tried to kill Spartacus, but it showed the man has balls. He resists learning to fight, but when the sword is in his hand he is determined and beautiful. When Agron watches him spar against Spartacus, he allows his eyes to linger and he truly regrets that the boy seems unlikely to stick around.

When the man’s reserve finally cracks, right after he has killed a man for what was surely the first time, he tells them his name. Tells Agron his name - because while the conversation was about Nasir and Spartacus and Spartacus’ cause, Agron knew some part of the revelation was meant for him. Nasir’s eyes, uncharacteristically soft and unguarded, meet his own. 

He finds Nasir washing the blood off of himself and hands him a cup of wine. Nasir’s hands shake but he clutches the cup, refusing to show anything but the fierceness that protects him like a shell. 

“Your first kill?” Agron asks. Nasir doesn’t bother to reply; they both know the answer. Agron doesn’t know what to say - he’s killed so many men that a single death has ceased to have much meaning to him. He puts a steadying hand on Nasir’s shoulder and Nasir doesn’t pull away from him. He knows he can’t push in this vulnerable moment, knows it would spook him. So he leaves Nasir to his thoughts and joins the rest of the men in talking and drinking. That night, he lies on his bedroll and worries, regrets he couldn’t have done more. 

Maybe he misses having someone to take care of. Maybe that’s why he’s so interested in Nasir, the boy who refuses to be broken even as his life crumbles and is reshaped around him, a stranger to himself in his new life. But his feelings toward Nasir are far from brotherly. He’s not the first smaller, slighter boy who has ever caught his eye, nor is he even necessarily the most attractive (to others, at least). There is something about him, though - something that makes Agron’s eyes follow him, trace the lines of his body as he grows stronger and more muscular, linger on his incongruously soft-looking hair, notice that he’s never seen anything more than a reluctant half-smile on the boy’s face.

And so he moves slowly. Casual touches, casual words. Nasir has lost his constantly guarded air, but the lie they tell about Naevia makes him erect a new wall, born of falsehood, between himself and the others. While in some ways this draws them closer - they whisper, they huddle, they **know** \- Agron can tell that Nasir never looks at him without recalling the lie, without feeling a weight of guilt that comes from inexperience with hard choices. 

When Crixus attacks him, the hurt is more than physical - he knows Nasir must have gone to Crixus. He’s not mad at Nasir - each man must follow his own conscience. But that Nasir would choose Crixus, Crixus of all people, over him, well, it burns. While Crixus thinks only about Naevia and Spartacus thinks about his cause, Agron thinks about Duro, about Aurelia, about all those they’ve lost, and about Nasir, who is still - for now - alive. Agron wants it to stay that way. 

In the end, Nasir joins them, despite his attempt to show solidarity with Agron, despite his sad eyes, anticipating, what, a punch from Agron? A harsh word? Agron has never held himself back from anger, so why should he now? But all Agron can muster are sad eyes of his own when Nasir leaves, and Agron really doesn’t think he will ever see him again. 

What’s one more loss? 

But, while Spartacus could never replace Duro, he was Agron’s closest friend, and the absence of both Spartacus and Nasir hits him hard. He wishes he had done something - nothing could have made Spartacus stay, but maybe he could have convinced Nasir. Too late now. He dreams of Nasir at night, sometimes battered and broken, sometimes happy and carefree. He wonders why the fuck he cares so much about a man who just passed through his life, how Nasir left such an impression without touching him. 

When he sees Nasir, pale and insensible, he wonders if it wouldn’t have been better for Nasir to have died far away from him, instead of in front of his eyes, like Duro. But as he stays alive, looks better, a slow feeling of relief comes over him. A lesson learned well enough without harsh punishment for his mistake, he thinks. 

Agron only agrees to the plan of saving Crixus in the arena because he honestly thinks it will work, that he will come back. It’s the first time in a while he’s cared about that. 

And then Nasir appears, demanding to take part, as reckless and headstrong as he always is. Fuck being careful, fuck approaching slowly, fuck the fear of scaring Nasir back into his shell. He leans in, kissing him slower than he means to, enjoying the feel of Nasir’s stubble under his hand and his soft lips against his own. 

When he pulls back, a smile grows on Nasir’s face. 


	2. Catulus

They have killed him.

Yes, he's still standing strong and upright in front of them, but he's just as dead as they are. Nasir might be the only one that realizes that.

He knows that if a master is killed by a slave, the entire household of slaves is considered complicit and put to death. When they killed the dominus, they damned him too.

He's from a different world than they are; they live where violence and might and the spirit of just one man can triumph - these values make up the life of a gladiator. But Nasir is from the world of the Roman elite and he knows that these gladiators will never survive this rebellion of theirs. And now he won't, either.

They think they're giving him a choice, but they have chosen for him. In his desperation, he tries to kill Spartacus, knowing that he will die either way. But maybe if Spartacus dies, this rebellion will fail and lives like his own will be saved. He tells Spartacus he liked the power and position of being a body slave to an important man, that it made him feel important in turn, but what he really means is that he has never starved, rarely been beaten, was guaranteed a place to live for many years. Yes, the price was the occasional use of his body for sex, but what difference does it make if he's using his body for sex or for serving cups at a dinner party? 

He wants to refuse the sword when it's handed to him, but he knows he'll find himself on the other end of it if he doesn't accept it. So he does - what else can he do? He finds release for his anger in the physical exertion. He tries to hurt Spartacus, stab him, win against him, but Spartacus keeps smacking him with the wooden blade. His frustration mounts, but it doesn't help.

When the tall, angry man comes to speak to him, he knows the man is trying to be nice, in his own way. He asks for his name - something which no one else has done yet, what does it matter if he's just fodder for their cause? - but the man hasn't earned it, hasn't given him a reason not to be Tiberius. When he leaves with a parting shot, Nasir recognizes the fury in his eyes as something that lives within himself, too.

Nasir is not like Chadara. Not that there's anything wrong with her methods - she is as much a realist as he is. She knows what she was chosen and trained for, and that her best chance is to play that role, no matter what society she finds herself in. But he has no intention of letting himself be used as a slave if they are forcing him to be free. 

He knows what desire looks like, has observed it objectively. He sees the way Agron watches him. The man thinks he is subtle, and Nasir laughs at Agron to himself. He can see the scars on his body and can tell he was deeply changed by the loss of his brother, but Agron's experience in violence gives him no advantage in matters of pleasure - that he thinks he is making a slow approach is funny to Nasir, to Tiberius who has been schooled in the ways of attraction from a young age. 

And yet. And yet Agron's quiet persistence, the fact that he doesn't attempt to claim Nasir or even pay him more attention than lingering glances and kind words gets to him. What does Agron want from him, if not his body? As a slave, he had nothing else to give to a lover.

When he kills a man for the first time, he knows he is doing the only thing he can to keep himself alive. That doesn't stop him from replaying the moment in his head for the next week. Every time he lifts a sword, it is heavy with the life he has taken and all the lives he has the potential to take.

He wants to give Agron something. To show that he is aware that the man cares if he lives or dies, that he cares that Nasir exists. He gives him his name.

Nasir is well-versed in the ways of the body. He has seen many men unclothed, touched and been fucked by many of them. But Agron is different somehow - he is unkempt, unlike the Roman men he has known, who were perfectly perfumed and groomed. He is real. He wonders what Agron's skin would feel like, if he dragged his fingertips down the line of his body, what he would taste like. But Nasir doesn't believe in the freedom they are offering him - a freedom that has become, to him, tied up and tangled with Agron.

He respects Agron, knows that he is more aware of the workings of the inner circle of this rebellion. He follows him in the lie about Naevia. What does it matter? When Chadara teases him about Agron's advances, his smile is hesitant and forced. So what if he finds the man attractive, charming, genuine in a way he has never known? They are all walking corpses. He has no need for a larger man to survive the way Chadara does. If these gladiators have given him anything, they have given him the power and advantage of being man and not an effeminate catamite; being a warrior and not a whore.

He channels his anger through his wooden practice sword, through his body newly shaped for warfare and not for servitude.

But, although he tries so hard to guard it, his heart is touched by Crixus' sadness and his love for Naevia. Most of all he is touched by the man's trust, in the end. He tells him the truth and doesn't care what that means for his relationship with Agron. He doesn't. 

Nasir knows that his pain at the betrayal in Agron's eyes is ephemeral. It is meaningless. He leaves the camp and goes towards the mines to help ease the suffering of others, since he thinks his own is beyond healing.

He was wrong. Being theoretically dead as a walking, living, feeling being is so very different from being close to actual death. In his delirium he understands what he did not before: that he could have time. Time to live and perhaps to love. Time, if only he would embrace it. Freedom. He decides that, if he survives his wound, he will no longer pretend that the period between now and death is meaningless. He was always going to die, sooner or later - if it is going to be sooner, he should make as much use as he can of that strange and foreign concept of choice. 

He drifts in and out of consciousness and chooses Agron.

He will go where Agron goes. To the arena, to the top of Vesuvius, to the underworld. He will savour that freedom, bought at so high a price, as long as he can. When Agron kisses him, he knows that he will have truly enjoyed what Spartacus gave him before he dies, and maybe it will be worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, sorry for it being so death-centric. I swear I'm not that morbid a person! But I feel like Nasir's a smart guy and knows what's up. I honestly believe there is no way that anyone who actually understood Rome thought that they would survive.


End file.
